After much prayer and serious consideration, I have decided that I will not be seeking the 2012 GOP nomination for President of the United States. As always, my family comes first and obviously Todd and I put great consideration into family life before making this decision. When we serve, we devote ourselves to God, family and country. My decision maintains this order.

My decision is based upon a review of what common sense Conservatives and Independents have accomplished, especially over the last year. I believe that at this time I can be more effective in a decisive role to help elect other true public servants to office - from the nation’s governors to Congressional seats and the Presidency. We need to continue to actively and aggressively help those who will stop the “fundamental transformation” of our nation and instead seek the restoration of our greatness, our goodness and our constitutional republic based on the rule of law.

From the bottom of my heart I thank those who have supported me and defended my record throughout the years, and encouraged me to run for President. Know that by working together we can bring this country back - and as I’ve always said, one doesn’t need a title to help do it.

I will continue driving the discussion for freedom and free markets, including in the race for President where our candidates must embrace immediate action toward energy independence through domestic resource developments of conventional energy sources, along with renewables. We must reduce tax burdens and onerous regulations that kill American industry, and our candidates must always push to minimize government to strengthen the economy and allow the private sector to create jobs.

Those will be our priorities so Americans can be confident that a smaller, smarter government that is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people can better serve this most exceptional nation.

In the coming weeks I will help coordinate strategies to assist in replacing the President, re-taking the Senate, and maintaining the House.

Thank you again for all your support. Let’s unite to restore this country!

COMMENTARY| Is Sarah Palin's time in the spotlight finally over? We've had to hear about the former governor of Alaska's political gaffes and personal family dramas for what seemed like forever, but that may finally be coming to an end as we see 2011 come to a close.

Fortunately for the citizens of our nation, according to the Hollywood Reporter, Palin chose the media over politics, and most recently she's been shopping her new reality television show, a series that is said to focus on her husband Todd and his career as a championship snowmobile racer, instead of the 47-year-old beauty queen herself.

Unfortunately for the Palins, both TLC owner Discovery Communications and A&E Networks, who fought over her previous reality series, "Sarah Palin's Alaska," has decided to pass. Her first show is said to have garnered about a million an episode, and the asking price for a show featuring Mr. Palin may have been a bit steep.

Could the fact that the public is tired of the focus that was put on the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate?

Now that the Alaska native is no longer considering a run for the presidency, she seems to have quickly faded from the headlines, and I say, it's about time.

Palin did provide a lot of fodder for entertainment. The endless scandals that she was a part of were hilariously funny at times, though they were also a bit scary when connected to the thought of her possibly attempting to run our country the same way that she seemed to run her family.

Thank goodness she was only able to pull the wool over the eyes of a small part of the population. Palin is a strong supporter of abstinence, and the year she discovered her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, was pregnant was the same year in which, according to the Washington Post , she used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live.

In the ultimate hypocrisy, as reported by the Huffington Post, Bristol went on to earn over $260,000 as an advocate against teen pregnancy, though she herself did not believe in the abstinence that she was promoting. Ironically, another Palin child, Track, got his girlfriend pregnant and the pair had a shot-gun wedding in May. Track became the father of yet another Palin grandbaby in early August.

The last straw may have been when the biography of the life and career of Palin was released, alleging that she had used cocaine and had an affair with the husband of her husband's business partner.

Yes, I say it's time to say "good riddance" to the former politician who should probably consider herself lucky to have stretched her 15 minutes of fame for as long as she did.

As Republicans wage a sharply divisive presidential nominating contest, HBO is preparing to release a television film on the 2008 ascent of then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin that seems sure to reopen the wounds of that lost campaign and reignite controversy over Palin's fitness for office and the wisdom of putting her on the ticket.

"Game Change," based on the 2010 book of the same name by two journalists, is not due to premiere on the pay-cable channel until March 10, but already on Friday Palin's supporters were hitting back at its depiction of her as woefully unprepared to be a national candidate or be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Former John McCain campaign aides depicted in the movie, including Steve Schmidt, the campaign's chief strategist, vouched for its accuracy in interviews with The Times this week.

"Game Change" shows Palin, portrayed by Julianne Moore, thrust on to the international stage, only for her handlers to belatedly discover the huge gaps in her knowledge of the world — ignorant of the Federal Reserve System, mistakenly believing Saddam Hussein ordered the 9/11 attacks against the United States and unaware that the prime minister, and not Queen Elizabeth II, ran the British government.

Some of the film's plot points will be familiar to those who read "Game Change," though some revelations will be new. Potentially more upsetting to Palin and her supporters is the way the film depicts the candidate's outbursts and periods of nonresponsiveness that lead aides to describe her as "catatonic" and possibly mentally unstable.

Schmidt and a chief Palin '08 aide, Nicolle Wallace, said they found it highly credible. Wallace said the film "captured the spirit and emotion of the campaign."

Palin, who resigned as Alaska governor in 2009 and has gone on to be an author, reality TV star and Fox News Channel contributor, remains a significant figure in the GOP despite her decision not to seek the presidential nomination this year. The crowd at last weekend's Conservative Political Action Conference greeted her speech with cheers, demonstrating her still strong appeal to conservative activists.

She and her followers already have begun denouncing the film, based on promotional trailers and accounts they have heard from others. Tim Crawford, treasurer of Palin's political action committee, had not seen the movie but on Friday released a statement saying HBO should label it a "fiction."

"I haven't seen HBO's latest effort at manipulating history," Crawford said. "However, based upon the description and reports from people who have viewed the film 'Game Change,' HBO has distorted, twisted and invented facts to create a false narrative and attract viewers. They call it a docu-drama, there is little 'docu' in it. HBO must add a disclaimer that this movie is fiction."

HBO noted the depth of research behind the movie and said in a statement: "HBO has a long track record of producing fact-based dramas, and our mantra has always been, 'get the story right.' We hope that people will withhold any judgment until they have viewed the film."

The Palin camp's response and a photo gallery of positive images from the campaign were posted Friday on the Sarah PAC website under the headline "Here They Go Again." Palin said on "Fox News Sunday" that she did not intend to see the movie and hoped others would not "waste their time" with the film. She also said "Game Change" was based on a "false narrative."

"This was a surreal experience for me," Schmidt said of the movie, in which he is played by actor Woody Harrelson. "Ten weeks of the campaign are condensed into a two-hour movie. But it tells the truth of the campaign. That is the story of what happened."

Since McCain's loss, the longtime Republican strategist has gradually been revealing more of his feelings about the lost election. The film vindicates the view he and many others around McCain had: the "high-risk, high-reward" choice of Palin, which Schmidt pushed for, had been a terrible mistake.

"My judgment was influenced by an ambition for victory, trying to figure out a way to win the race," Schmidt said from his Lake Tahoe home. "There is no question she helped to energize the campaign and to catapult John McCain into the lead. But the result was the nomination of someone who was fundamentally not qualified to be in the national command authority. That supersedes any short-term or long-term political advantage. Obviously, I have great regret over that."

Schmidt and most of the other top operatives from the McCain campaign gave extended interviews to John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, the book authors. Many of the same sources also spoke to Danny Strong, writer of the film, and to director Jay Roach, who also teamed on the Emmy-winning docudrama "Recount," about the razor's edge 2000 election finish. Chris Edwards, one of Palin's 2008 staffers, served as a technical advisor to the filmmakers.

Although the 427-page book "Game Change" is mostly devoted to inside accounts of other aspects of the 2008 race, the film focuses exclusively on the McCain-Palin campaign. It's already attracting attention in part because of the reputation of its three stars, Moore, Harrelson and Ed Harris, who plays McCain; all are past Academy Award nominees. Tom Hanks is among its executive producers.

The movie attempts to ratchet up the realism quotient by intercutting its acted scenes with news footage. Palin's fateful interview with then-CBS anchor Katie Couric, for example, alternates scenes of Moore's answers with video of Couric's actual questions. Then-Sens. Barack Obama, Joe Biden and others also appear in news footage.

Director Roach has called it a "dramatization," though in compressing events "it can't always be perfectly detail-accurate." Heilemann and Halperin served as consultants on the "Game Change" script and have cameos as journalists.

One jarring revelation in which the movie reaches beyond the book comes when Schmidt makes a query to assess nominee Palin's awareness of foreign affairs, asking McCain's VP pick how she would respond in the White House to news of waning British support for the war in Iraq.

The Palin character, sitting opposite Schmidt in a campaign bus, says McCain would "continue to have an open dialogue" with the queen of England on the subject. Flabbergasted, the Schmidt character informs her the queen is not the head of government. Palin asks who is. He informs her that the country has a prime minister.

Strong said he uncovered that additional episode during the 25 interviews he conducted with principals from Team McCain. Schmidt confirmed the account.

Though those new details will doubtless pop out at political observers, general audiences will likely be more attuned to the film's Pygmalion theme and considerable sweep — following Palin from her Alaska roots to her whirlwind vetting as a vice presidential candidate to her blockbuster GOP convention speech and then, downward, through her disastrously inarticulate interview with Couric, to a point where she openly feuds with staffers assigned to her team.

More than a few scenes depict her sympathetically. They show a deeply religious family matriarch who also feels intense loyalty to McCain. Another emotional wallop comes in the movie's re-creation of Palin's warm communion with families of special-needs children. The families flocked to Palin because of her devotion to her youngest son, who has Down syndrome.

In her own book "Going Rogue," Palin described the McCain campaign as defeatist, determined to script every moment and poorly organized. She wrote how she wanted to hit Democratic nominee Obama harder and to hone the party's focus on the economic crisis. Palin said she was not allowed to do the kind of free-wheeling, people-to-people campaigning that made her hugely popular with many voters.

"I was never in a funk," Palin told Fox's Chris Wallace when he asked her about the movie last weekend. "Thank God I have the right perspective on what really matters in life, Chris. And there's no need to ever be in a funk when you know what [the] right priorities are and what really matters."

One of the film's final notes will doubtless also stir the political waters. The McCain character is about to leave to deliver his concession speech when he calls the Palin character back and tells her: "You are one of the leaders of the party now, Sarah. Don't get co-opted by Limbaugh and the other extremists. They'll destroy the party if you let them."

McCain has told those close to him he is tired of rehashing the '08 loss. He said to an interviewer recently: "It will be a cold day in Gila Bend, Arizona, before I watch that movie."

Among the many plots raised in the upcoming HBO movie "Game Change," one of the most provocative is the conflict between 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Steve Schmidt, the senior strategist on the campaign.

In defending the substance of the film in an interview with The Times, Schmidt also talked about what he said should be an "important lesson" from the last national race.

"Even today, when you turn on the television and hear talk about who will likely be vice president, all of the speculation is thoroughly through the prism of political preparedness, not through the prism of being prepared to take the oath of office as president," Schmidt said.

The long-time Republican party consultant said other campaigns should learn from McCain '08 that potential vice presidential running mates can't be scrutinized too closely.

"The vetting process did not disclose what would become obvious afterward," Schmidt said in the phone interview from his home in Lake Tahoe. "We had a person who fundamentally lacked the knowledge and basis -- at a very, very deep level -- to be a plausible commander in chief and to take the oath of office as president, should it become necessary."

The film, due to air March 10, shows how the campaign was leaning toward choosing Sen. Joe Lieberman -- a former Democrat who by that point was an independent -- as McCain's VP pick, until it received considerable blowback from conservatives. The campaign then shifted, with only about a week to go before the Republican Convention, to other possibilities.

Aside from that shortened time-frame, Schmidt declined to rehash why the McCain campaign failed to more thoroughly check out Palin, then the governor of Alaska. But he said he personally had to bear some responsibility. "When you are a close advisor to one of the two people who could be president of the United States," Schmidt said, "it requires you to exercise good judgment, not 98% of the time or 99% of the time but 100% of the time."

Palin has told interviewers she does not intend to watch "Game Change." Her aides posted a statement on the Sarah PAC website Friday calling the two-hour movie a "fiction." They suggested that a quest for higher ratings motivated the filmmakers and the cable company.

The statement, in part, declares: "HBO Studio heads decided they would generate more profit by inventing facts and scenes for the purpose of fictionalizing a history written by people with no personal knowledge of the situations they attempt to depict."

Palin, who left the governor's office in 2009 and went on to become an author, reality TV star and Fox News commentator, has previously rejected the notion that McCain's team did not know enough about her prior to tapping her as his running mate. She called the vetting that ended up in her selection "thorough" and blamed the Arizona senator's handlers for botching the campaign by being too tentative and controlling, among other failures.

Like many other officials from McCain-Palin '08, Schmidt gave extensive interviews to the two journalists who wrote the book "Game Change" and also talked to the writer and director of the movie. While Schmidt endorsed the final product, he said some details varied from actual events.

In the movie, for instance, the McCain character acknowledges the need to shake up a race he is trailing and to close the "gender gap" -- the wide lead candidate Barack Obama had among women. In the movie, the McCain character responds to this information, saying, "So find me a woman."

Schmidt said he never heard McCain speak those words. "It was a minor point of dramatization to make a point," Schmidt said. "But the essence of that point was true: that he knew, and we knew, we had to do something different."

[For the Record, Feb. 18: An earlier version of this post said the McCain campaign was leaning toward picking Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman as McCain’s running mate in 2008. At that point, Lieberman had switched his party affiliation from Democrat to independent.]

indeed it is time...and time to call out the white republican party for what it really stands for...including Ted Nugent and his sickening bigotryExclusive: Seller of Controversial Anti-Obama Sticker Says It's Not Racist

Paula Smith of Hinesville, Georgia has a company called Stickatude.com. And they’re selling their own version of an anti-Obama bumper sticker that reads “Don’t Re-Nig 2012.” Ms. Smith told me in a telephone conversation on Saturday afternoon that the bumper sticker has been in their inventory since June 2010, but just in the last few days it’s started selling. The price is $3. Ms. Smith insisted that the bumper sticker is not racist. I asked her about the “N” word, for which “nig” is the shortened version. “According to the dictionary [the N word] does not mean black. It means a low down, lazy, sorry, low down person. That’s what the N word means.”

In Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, the word is defined as “member of any dark skinned race. Taken to be offensive.” Dictionary.com says the word “is now probably the most offensive word in English. Its degree of offensiveness has increased markedly in recent years, although it has been used in a derogatory manner since at least the Revolutionary War. Definitions 1a, 1b, and 2 represent meanings that are deeply disparaging and are used when the speaker deliberately wishes to cause great offense.”

Ms. Smith — who has an affable disposition and a hearty laugh–said she thought the website was “dead” and up until recently none of her bumper stickers was selling at all. Another site, called Stumpy’s Stickers, was originally credited with selling the Obama sticker. Ms. Smith says however she doesn’t own that site and didn’t know anything about it. She said Stumpy’s Stickers could have linked to their site, but she didn’t sell them any that they could have re-sold. Where did Ms. Smith find the sticker in the first place? “We just found it on the internet, and thought it was cute. It’s been up there since he’s been president.”

How did I find Stickatude.com? Clicking on Stumpysstickers.com from a story posted to Yahoo! caused a redirect to Stickatude. Ms. Smith is the official registered owner of the internet address, www.stickatude.com.

The Smiths own a well known paint ball field in Hinesville — a town near Savannah. Mrs. Smith said customers come from all over the world. Ms. Smith said she is not racist, she just wants Obama out of office. She tells me she doesn’t have a preferred replacement candidate. “And besides Obama is not even black. He’s got a mixture of race. It’s his choice of what his nationality is. I’m a mixed breed. I call myself a Heinz 57,” she says, referring to an ancestry that’s part of French, Scottish, and German.

“I just want someone that’s going to help the United States and not give it other countries all the time. And stop giving the immigrants the benefits that most Americans inside their own states can’t even get because they’re giving it others who don’t even live here as an American.

“I do find it amazing and entertaining that one of our stickers has become a racist thing,” Ms. Smith told me. I asked her if she thought the “N” Word was a bad word? “No,” she said, ” because I don’t use it. I have kids here around me that are black kids. I call them my own kids. I’ve helped black families…to guide them in the right direction. Paintball is one of these things. We like to laugh and have a good time. That’s our way of life.”

Alaskan baby daddy Levi Johnston, former fiancé of Bristol Palin and father of their child, has another baby on the way and plans to name her after his favorite pistol.

Johnston said he and girlfriend Sunny Oglesby would name their baby "Breeze Beretta," after the Italian handgun.

In an interview set to air tonight on Inside Edition, 21-year-old Johnston and Oglesby confirmed the baby would be named Beretta, "like the gun."

Johnston, an avid hunter, who once bared more than his arms for Playgirl, lifted his shirt sleeve to display a freshly-inked tattoo with the girl's first name "Breeze" written across his bicep.

Oglesby told Inside Edition her pregnancy was unplanned, the result of several days together in a wilderness cabin without any birth control.

"We were out at the cabin for like, four days, and forgot the birth control," she said.

Johnston said he planned to play a bigger part in Breeze Beretta's life than he does in that of his son Tripp, the 3-year-old he had with Bristol Palin. Johnston and Palin were high school sweethearts when she got pregnant. Johnston and Bristol Palin became engaged soon after Gov. Palin was named John McCain's 2008 running mate. The couple did not marry.

"I'm actually in love… not doing it just because we had a kid together," Johnson told Inside Edition.

Bristol Palin, a one-time "Dancing with the Stars" contestant and abstinence advocate, has criticized Johnston for failing to pay child support and for being an absentee dad.